Sep 12, 2022 · 1h 14m · how-i-built-this
Rivian: RJ Scaringe
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, host Guy Raz interviews Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe, tracing the company's decade-long journey from academic engineering and scrapped prototypes to pioneering all-electric adventure trucks and scaling global manufacturing.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 42.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 4.5 Guest teaching 3.8 Guest disagreement 0.8 Guy pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:04:04 RJ dismisses stress framing on Amazon obligations
When Guy Raz suggests RJ must be heavily stressed delivering 100k vans to Amazon alongside 80k backlogged consumer orders, RJ rejects the framing completely, asserting the company is in its lowest-risk position ever with $17B cash in the bank.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 59:50 Guy Raz presses on missed 2021 delivery forecastsGuy Raz explicitly confronts RJ on falling short of Rivian's 20,000 to 40,000 vehicle delivery target for 2021, holding the newly public company accountable to its ambitious production promises.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 48:15 RJ reveals counterintuitive customer demographicsGuy posits that Rivian is competing with traditional contractor truck brands, but RJ educates him with company data demonstrating that 90% of their buyers never owned a pickup and 80% never owned an EV.
Guy holds their own ▶ 17:41 Guy contextualizes the 2009 automotive collapseGuy Raz brings deep economic domain knowledge to describe the Detroit bailout crisis, GM/Chrysler bankruptcies, and the uniquely hostile fundraising environment facing an automotive startup in 2009.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RJ Scaringe's Upbringing and Obsession with Cars | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy Raz sets a warm, conversational tone exploring RJ Scaringe's childhood engineering mindset and early passion for cars. RJ shares anecdotes about his father and neighborhood Porsche restoration with zero tension. | |
| Engineering Rigor at MIT Sloan Lab | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Guy questions why a car company founder would pursue an engineering doctorate rather than immediately building. RJ details his calculated strategy to use MIT's Sloan Lab to gain credibility and evaluate existing OEM inertia. | |
| Targeting Carbon Emissions and Clean-Sheet Concepts | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Guy brings up the 2000s narrative around GM killing the electric car to contextualize skepticism. RJ explains that academic engineers already knew electrification was inevitable, leaving only execution open. | |
| The Genesis of Mainstream Motors and Avera | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy humorously teases RJ about the uninspired name Mainstream Motors before discussing the initial Avera hybrid sports car concept. RJ elaborates on bootstrapping the company right after graduation. | |
| Bootstrapping Through the 2009 Automotive Crisis | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy frames the macro headwinds of launching an auto startup in 2009 amid US government bailouts of Chrysler and GM. RJ details the mismatch between traditional VC MVP models and auto manufacturing capital needs. | |
| Scrappy Prototype Assembly in a Florida Warehouse | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks about the mechanical reality of assembling a prototype from scratch in Florida. RJ describes the hand-built CAD design process and admits youthful optimism masked the steepness of the climb. | |
| Questioning Purpose and Abandoning the Avera Project | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Guy looks at photos of the finished Avera vehicle and asks about the emotional pivot point. RJ explains his internal crisis of purpose and why he chose to scrap the project despite having invested years of work. | |
| Mid-Show Break: The Quiet Redirection | 5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Guy asks why RJ did not follow Tesla's roadmap into electric sedans or sports cars. RJ clarifies that pickup trucks were the most inefficient and profitable market segment where electrification could deliver maximum carbon impact. | |
| Rebranding to Rivian and Relocating to Michigan | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy inquires about moving the team to Michigan and the origin of the Rivian name. RJ recounts the legal challenge from Hyundai over 'Azera' and finding inspiration in Florida's Indian River. | |
| Partnering with Abdul Latif Jamil for Survival Capital | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Guy probes how an engineer copes with the relentless grind of fundraising. RJ recounts connecting with Saudi conglomerate Abdul Latif Jamil via MIT alumni networks and managing team payroll anxiety. | |
| Going Completely Dark: The Stealth Strategy | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Guy notes the conspicuous five-year media blackout in Rivian's history. RJ justifies total stealth mode as a shield against public commitment traps and explains why he refused to develop secondary fallback plans. | |
| Designing for Outdoor Adventure and New Demographics | 5 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Guy compares truck branding to commercial contractors and traditional rural Americana. RJ counters with proprietary customer data showing 90% of buyers never owned a pickup truck and 80% are first-time EV drivers. | |
| Buying the Mitsubishi Facility and Perspectives on Tesla | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Guy asks about acquiring the Normal, Illinois facility and whether Tesla's momentum caused anxiety. RJ explains the global scale of 1.5 billion ICE vehicles, viewing Tesla's success as essential validation rather than direct rivalry. | |
| Debuting the R1T and R1S in Los Angeles | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Guy and RJ discuss coming out of stealth at the 2018 Los Angeles Auto Show with the R1T and R1S, backed by undisclosed commitments from Amazon. | |
| Mid-Show Break: Emerging from the Shadows | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Guy reviews the public shock of Rivian appearing with 600 employees. RJ shares how tier-1 supplier refusals forced the team to build software and electrical architectures internally. | |
| Managing Supply Chain Turbulence and Multiline Production | 6 | 6 | 2 | 3 | Guy presses RJ on missed 2021 production goals and contrasts hardware scaling with software. RJ details supply chain intricacies involving 25,000 components across 400 tier suppliers and four simultaneous vehicle launches. | |
| Factory Ramping and Amazon Delivery Van Commitments | 6 | 5 | 2 | 4 | Guy highlights the pressure of 80,000 backlogged consumer deposits, 100,000 Amazon delivery vans, and Tesla employee poaching lawsuits. RJ reframes the risk profile, pointing to $17B in cash reserves and normalizing industry talent battles. | |
| Broadening EV Appeal Through Uncompromising Performance | 6 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Guy explores the political polarization of EV adoption and vegan interiors. RJ insists extreme performance capabilities, such as smoking a Ferrari on PCH, will persuade mainstream drivers faster than moral messaging. | |
| Defining Impact and Navigating Entrepreneurial Uncertainty | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks the show's signature question regarding luck versus grit and how RJ defines the finish line. RJ emphasizes building resilience through adversity and measuring success strictly by climate impact. |
Statements from this episode (23)
Scaringe: Auto industry change over next 20 years will exceed horse-to-car shift
“The change is going to be larger over the next two decades than what we saw in the first two decades of the auto industry, you know, the sort of the shift from a horse to a car, as we now think about going from a combustion powered non-connected vehicle, which…”
Scaringe: Starting a car company from scratch yields more impact than legacy OEMs
“And what I realized is that the likelihood of me being successful starting a car company with no capital, no team, No technology, no brand no facilities, no supply chain. I actually felt the likelihood of me having impact doing that was still higher than the l…”
Scaringe: Rivian's original plan was a 100-MPG sports car
“The idea was a hundred mile per gallon sports car and build a brand around efficiency and sustainability. And then from there continue to develop more and more technology, different products.”
RJ Scaringe: Rivian built its first prototype for under $1M
“Well under a million dollars, we built the first prototype.”
RJ Scaringe: Rivian was initially funded by refinancing family homes
“In the beginning, it was just family and friends mainly my dad and I. And I bought a house when I was in high school, and my dad refinanced his house, and we both put that money into the business.”
Scaringe: Proposing electric pickups in 2013 got Rivian laughed out of rooms
“When I said I want to make electric pickups and this is 2013, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say we'd get laughed out of the room.”
Scaringe: Pickups are the auto industry's most profitable, least efficient segment
“This is a segment that it's, you know, it's the least efficient vehicles on the road. It's among the most profitable segments.”
Scaringe: Copying Tesla's Roadster a decade later was not worth doing
“Tesla launched its roadster in like the 2006, 2007 timeframe. And the thought of going out and building what Tesla had already done, you know, 10 years later, just, it felt like that wasn't a problem that the world needed worked on.”
Scaringe: Stealth Mode Kept Rivian Flexible on Strategy and Timelines
“And it was actually really helpful because it avoided us getting overly married To any specific aspect of the strategy or any specific aspect of our timeline.”
Scaringe: Working on Plan B drops Plan A's success probability to zero
“The moment you start working on plan B or plan C, The likelihood of Plan A working goes to zero percent.”
Scaringe: Roughly 90% of Rivian buyers never owned a pickup before
“So people who've previously owned a pickup truck represent just over 10% of our customers, meaning 90% have never owned a pickup before, which is awesome.”
Scaringe: Over 80% of Rivian customers are first-time EV owners
“And again, we now have data on this where less than 20% of our customers have owned EVs before, meaning more than 80% have ever owned an EV.”
Scaringe: Rivian bought its Normal plant for $16M in early 2017
“And so we ultimately, as you said, we bought it for sixteen million dollars, which was just an incredible deal. Closed in beginning of 2017. Now we didn't have at that point the money to actually turn it into a plant for ourselves. So we sort of bought it and …”
Scaringe: Less than 2% of the world's 1.5B cars are electric
“I think today there's around one and a half billion cars on the planet, and even today, this is now, you know, relative to 20 17, 20 18, this is a lot further along, but of those one and a half billion cars, less than two percent of those are electric.”
Scaringe: Tesla's success helps Rivian rather than hurting it
“Earlier than us in building what I think of as a very strong brand, we saw that as a good thing, but the world needs more than just Tesla to convert those one and a half billion cars to electric and to completely remap the industry. So we, yeah, I think the wo…”
Scaringe: Rivian developed electronics in-house because suppliers refused to partner
“The decisions to build electronics and software in house were both strategic, but also practical. We couldn't get suppliers to work with us. So we built with the benefit of time, a lot of capability.”
Scaringe: A Rivian vehicle contains around 25,000 discrete components
“So if you look at the number of discrete components in the car, like individual mechanical components, there's around 25,000 components, and any single one of those could disrupt the production.”
Scaringe: Rivian lines run only 25–30 hours weekly due to parts shortages
“So the plant, the lines are running at essentially 25 to 30 hours a week. Because we don't have enough parts.”
Scaringe: Rivian employs roughly 500 to 600 former Tesla workers
“We say we've got about 13,000 employees. A lot of our employees formerly worked at Tesla, so probably like five, 600.”
Scaringe: Gas cars will be rare antiques within 25 years
“So call it the next 15 to 20 years, we'll see the fleet of vehicles in the world
Essentially shift almost entirely towards electric, but you know, within, I'd say, 25 years, it would be fairly rare to see a gasoline powered car on the road.
It would be like se…”